


Running in Circles

by LadySokolov



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Brat Bruce Wayne, Falling In Love, M/M, Matchmaker Alfred, Soft Jeremiah Valeska, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 14:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15951629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySokolov/pseuds/LadySokolov
Summary: For the Gotham Batjokes exchange on tumblr.Bruce wakes up with a headache, barely any memories of the night before, and a stranger standing in his kitchen; one that looks a lot like Jerome Valeska.





	Running in Circles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Val_Creative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/gifts).



> This was written for the Gotham Batjokes exchange. I got to write for @nooowestayandgetcaught on tumblr, aka val_creative on here.
> 
> I chose to fill two of their prompts, which were:
> 
> #1 Bruce and Jeremiah’s first kiss
> 
> and
> 
> #3 Brat!Bruce meets Soft!Jeremiah

Bruce Wayne opened his eyes and immediately regretted doing so. The light was too bright, his head was killing him, and the back of his mouth tasted like ash. He just wanted to roll over, wrap his arms around the nearest warm body and go back to sleep.

There was no-one near him though; no-one whose shoulder he might bury his face in and no limbs that might become tangled with his own. Whatever else had happened last night he had fallen asleep alone for once and not in the pile of drunken, still-clothed strangers that he had become somewhat accustomed to after spending a night with Tommy and his friends.

Bruce opened one of his eyes, slowly and cautiously lest daylight immediately assault him once more, to discover that he had fallen asleep not in his bedroom, or in any sort of bed, but draped over the sofa in his sitting room in a position that should not have been comfortable and probably hadn’t been if the ache in one of his arms was any indication. The window was only half open, but even half a window’s worth of light was enough to give him a headache.

He couldn’t remember much from the previous night. Just drinking and Tommy’s laughter, which always sounded hollow and cruel, and leaning on the shoulder of a girl whose name he couldn’t remember, and then more drinking. He could remember snatches of what had to be nightmares much more clearly than the last couple of hours at the club; Jerome Valeska’s wild eyes staring deep into his soul and Ra’s Al Ghul’s blade buried deep in Alfred’s chest.

Bruce groaned and slammed his eyes shut, hoping that he might be able to salvage another few hours of sleep, but the dryness in his mouth was distracting, and there was a crick in his neck which made it impossible to get even slightly comfortable.

He had to will himself into sitting up, his whole body feeling at least twice as heavy as it should. For a moment he contemplated calling out for Alfred, but he wasn’t sure that he could cope with the inevitable lecture that his butler would give him about the dangers of underage drinking and Tommy being a ‘bad influence’ on Bruce that would accompany whatever help Alfred brought.

Bruce sat there for a few minutes with his head in his hands, trying and ultimately failing to get his head to stop throbbing via willpower alone, before finally forcing himself to his feet. 

At some point during the previous night he had abandoned his shoes and socks, and he had no idea where they had ended up except that they weren’t anywhere near where he had eventually fallen asleep. Apart from the missing footwear he was still wearing all of the clothes that he had left the house in, and they unfortunately still wreaked of alcohol and Tommy’s cologne. Bruce had considered telling his friend that he wore too much, but it always felt like too much effort to stand up to him, even on something so small. Better to just go along with whatever Tommy decided.

Bruce sniffed at his clothing, and felt his stomach churn as though he was about to be sick in response.

He entered the kitchen, intent on at least grabbing himself a glass of water, and stopped short when he noticed that there was someone else in the room. They were well dressed, wearing a thick suit of muted orange, but there was something about their red hair and the way that they held themselves that immediately set off alarm bells in Bruce’s mind.

“Oh,” the person exclaimed, before turning around. “You’re awake.”

Bruce reached out and grabbed at the door-frame, needing to steady himself with  _something_. He knew that face. Maybe it wasn’t as scarred and deformed as the last time he had seen it, and it wasn’t wearing the cruel, unnatural smile that Bruce had expected, but it was still a face that had been haunting Bruce’s nightmares for months.

The person standing in his kitchen looked almost exactly like Jerome Valeska.

“Good morning Bruce,” the intruder said, his voice unexpectedly soft and gentle, especially compared to the mad cackling and deranged death-threats that Bruce had been expecting. “I hope you slept well.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing in my house!” Bruce demanded, before wincing as the sound of his own raised voice made the throbbing pain in his head flare up.

“Oh, I’m… I’m sorry,” the stranger said, and it was only then in those moments that Bruce realized that he wasn’t  _actually_  talking to Jerome Valeska at all; just someone that looked almost exactly like him. After all, Jerome would never act so timidly or speak so softly, never mind the fact that he was supposed to be safely locked up in Arkham.

Bruce hated it; hated the fact that he had to strain to hear the stranger talk, hated the fact that Jerome’s doppelganger was in  _his_  house, and most of all, hated the fact that he was being forced to deal with such a bizarre situation when he had woken up with a hangover less than ten minutes earlier.

“I was…” the stranger paused to clear his throat, and Bruce found his eyes glued to the sight of the other man’s Adams apple as it bobbed in his throat.

“I thought you knew that I would be staying here,” the intruder tried again.

Staying here? Bruce didn’t like the sound of that one bit. It was bad enough that this stranger was stepping foot in  _his home_ , worse to think that Bruce might be forced to deal with him for more than just these few awkward minutes.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Bruce demanded through gritted teeth.

“Master Bruce!” Alfred’s voice rang out, and Bruce mentally retracted his earlier opinions of the intruder’s voice. He would take that soft murmuring over Alfred’s booming enthusiasm any day, or at least he would while his head was pounding as painfully as it was. He suspected that Alfred had taken to speaking in an especially loud manner when Bruce was suffering from a hangover as a not-so-subtle form of punishment.

“I see you’ve met our house guest!” Alfred said, striding over to Bruce with a smug look on his face. He clamped a hand down on Bruce’s shoulder, making him wince.

Bruce had no idea what Alfred could possibly find amusing about the situation, unless of course he was simply reveling in Bruce’s obvious discomfort. He tugged on Alfred’s arm, pulling him in close enough that Bruce could hiss angrily into his butler’s ear without Jerome’s doppelganger overhearing his words.

“What is he doing here!?” he snapped, glancing over his shoulder to find the intruder staring at the two of them. Their eyes met for just a moment before Jerome’s doppelganger glanced away, a dark pink blush suddenly covering most of his face.

“Why he’s staying with us Master Bruce,” Alfred said. He sounded so damned smug, as though somehow he had just won some sort of victory over his charge.

“Don’t you remember? I brought the matter up with you when you stumbled home in a drunken stupor after two o-bloody-clock in the morning last night, and you said, and I believe these were your exact words Master Bruce; ‘Sure. That sounds great Al. Why not?’”

Bruce tried to remember it, but everything after the first couple of hours at the club were a blur. He couldn’t even remember how he had gotten home.

“I agreed to it?” he asked.

“Yes, you did,” Alfred replied. 

Suddenly he pulled Bruce closer, so that he could hiss his next words at Bruce through teeth that were clenched tightly shut in a manner that was substantially more threatening than Bruce suspected his own attempt at menace had been earlier. 

“And even if you didn’t have any bloody clue what it was you were agreeing to last night, I’m not going to let you back out now and throw the poor lad out on his arse. I won’t have it.”

Bruce glanced over at the stranger again. He really didn’t want to deal with any of this right now, and that included Alfred’s temper.

“Who is he?” Bruce asked. Why did he look so much like Jerome?

“You know, I tried to tell you all of this last night,” Alfred said. “Perhaps if you weren’t so completely sloshed you would have remembered some of it or at least…”

Bruce glared at Alfred. It was enough to stop the lecture at least, although Alfred still treated him to a rather over-dramatic and entirely unnecessary roll of the eyes.

“His name is Jeremiah Valeska,” Alfred replied. “He’s Jerome’s brother. Been in hiding for most of his life from what I’ve heard on account of his brother being such a bloody psychopath. He was even living under a different name up until recently. Your Dad found him and had him tucked away in one of Wayne Enterprise’s subsidiaries. I’ll let him tell you the rest.”

“Why is he staying with us?” Bruce asked, still confused about pretty much everything that was going on.

“It seems that the uh… bunker that he’s been living in suffered some structural damage in the recent storms, and he needs a place to stay while it gets fixed up. Shouldn’t be any longer than a couple of weeks.”

“But why stay with  _us_?” Bruce said, still frowning. Surely the other man had friends or colleagues or  _someone_ that he could stay with instead of approaching a complete stranger.

Alfred paused and looked over at Jeremiah, as though making sure that the other man wasn’t listening in. Bruce glanced over as well, and discovered that Jeremiah was staring out the window, quite pointedly  _not_  listening about as clearly as he could without leaving the room, despite the fact that Bruce and Alfred’s discussion was obviously about him. It couldn’t have been a comfortable position to be in, and for a brief moment Bruce found that he could spare his unexpected house guest some of the pity that had previously been reserved exclusively for himself and his bastard of a hangover.

“Sounds like he didn’t have much contact with the outside world,” Alfred explained. “Your father was one of the few people that he knew and trusted. Plus, you already know about his brother and everything, so I suppose staying with us was the logical choice.”

Bruce could certainly understand why someone might choose to cut themselves off from the rest of the world if it guaranteed they wouldn’t have to deal with the very real problem of Jerome Valeska coming after them. Still, he couldn’t help but shake the feeling that Alfred had some sort of ulterior motive for wanting Jeremiah to stay with them. In fact Bruce wouldn’t put it past him to have actually offered Wayne Manor as a safe place for Jeremiah to stay, and all without consulting Bruce first.

“Plus I figured it might be nice for you to have someone closer to your own age staying in the house for a while,” Alfred said.

There it was. Bruce knew that Alfred was planning something.

“Let me guess,” Bruce said. “He’s supposed to be a ‘positive influence’?”

“Well, that would be a nice bonus, wouldn’t it?” Alfred said, and he still sounded far too smug in Bruce’s opinion.

He decided in that moment that he and Jeremiah were not going to get along at all. In fact Bruce decided that he already hated Jeremiah on principle.

Bruce rolled his eyes at Alfred and moved away from him and towards his houseguest, who was still standing by the kitchen window. He extended a hand towards Jeremiah, who stared at it for a moment before hesitantly reaching out and taking in his own.

Bruce roughly shook Jeremiah’s hand, his heart not really behind the gesture, before dropping it completely. Jeremiah shook hands as though he only knew how it was supposed to work in theory; as though contact with other human beings was an alien concept to him that he was still just getting the hang of. From what Bruce had heard about Jeremiah’s life that might not have been too far from the truth.

“Welcome to Wayne Manor,” Bruce said, only half meaning it. “Alfred explained your situation to me.”

He wondered if Jeremiah could tell that his smile was fake.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” Jeremiah said.

Bruce stepped back. Now that the pleasantries were taken care of he needed a shower and some painkillers and a coffee and possibly to go back to bed and sleep for several days until the situation had resolved itself and Jeremiah had already left the manor.

“Right,” Alfred said. The bastard was still smiling. God, Bruce hated it when Alfred had occasion to act so smug and so confident. “Well that’s that sorted. I’ll leave the two of you to get better acquainted, shall I?”

Bruce rolled his eyes again and made a move before Alfred could.

“Perhaps later,” Bruce said. “For now I need a shower. Alfred, get me a change of clothes and some aspirin.”

He left the room, not wanting to look at Jeremiah or the undoubtedly disappointed look that would be on Alfred’s face at that moment. He was growing well and truly sick of seeing disappointment on Alfred’s face.

* * *

Bruce returned downstairs almost an hour later, feeling at least slightly more human after a freshen up and a couple of painkillers, even if Alfred had only handed over said painkillers once Bruce had promised that he would be nice to Jeremiah.

Bruce didn’t know what Alfred was so worried about. Bruce had been perfectly civil to Jeremiah so far, or at least he had been once Bruce had established that Jeremiah was not Jerome and was therefore unlikely in Wayne Manor with the intent to kidnap, torture or murder Bruce or anyone that he cared for.

When Bruce first arrived downstairs Jeremiah had been curled up in a couch in the sitting room, reading a book that Bruce didn’t recognize as belonging to the manor’s collection, but as soon as he saw Bruce he leapt to his feet and disappeared into the kitchen.

Bruce followed him, partially because he needed to eat something for breakfast, no matter how much his stomach was protesting, and partially because he wanted to know why Jeremiah had immediately departed the room upon seeing Bruce. If Jeremiah was up to something then Bruce wanted to know what it was. Jeremiah might not be his twin, but that didn’t mean that Bruce was at all inclined to trust him.

Jeremiah worked hurriedly at one of the benches for a moment before turning around. He approached Bruce with a soft smile on his face and offered him a mug of something that he held clutched tightly between his hands. Bruce caught the scent of freshly brewed coffee and immediately took the cup from Jeremiah’s hands.

Bruce brought the coffee up to his lips and took a hesitant sip. It was too sweet and had too much cream in it, but his hangover was bad enough that he soon realized he didn’t care, and downed the next few mouthfuls of the drink with relish.

“You looked like you needed it,” Jeremiah explained.

He stared at Bruce expectantly, and Bruce wondered whether he was waiting for Bruce to thank him. 

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Bruce said instead. 

“It’s all right,” Jeremiah said. “I should apologize as well.”

Bruce wasn’t sure what Jeremiah thought he had to apologize for, except for… well, existing in a manner that was currently inconvenient for Bruce and showing up in Bruce’s kitchen without warning him.

“I understand that my brother has put you through a lot,” Jeremiah continued, and the fact that he sounded a little nervous as he said it made Bruce actually like him, at least a little, which was also horribly inconvenient. “It must have been quite a shock to see me standing in your house, especially considering you don’t seem to remember agreeing to any of this.”

Bruce leaned against the kitchen bench next to Jeremiah and tried to remember that he was supposed to hate his house guest, but it wasn’t as easy as he would have liked when Jeremiah was speaking so kindly and so softly, and when Bruce was still holding a half-full cup of freshly brewed coffee between his hands.

“Its fine,” Bruce muttered over the rim of the mug as he brought it up to his lips again. God, coffee really had been exactly what he had needed. “Thanks.”

He said it quietly beneath his breath, but apparently not quietly enough for the word to escape Jeremiah’s keen ears.

“You’re welcome,” he said, his own voice not much louder than Bruce’s whispered gratitude had been.

* * *

Bruce avoided Jeremiah as much as he possibly could over the next few days. It was easier than he had originally feared. Jeremiah kept himself to himself; spending his time either curled up in the manor’s library pouring over old books or working on whatever project it was that had him squinting at detailed plans on his computer for hours on end. It was only during meal times, or on the few occasions that an increasingly frustrated Alfred plotted to ensure that the two of them, for whatever reason, ended up in the same room, that Bruce was really forced to interact with Jeremiah at all.

It was only when Jeremiah had already been staying at Wayne Manor for a week that Bruce found himself in a situation where he was inclined to willingly seek out Jeremiah’s company.

Saturday night meant heading out into town with Tommy and their ‘friends’ again; not that Bruce hadn’t spent a few nights with them over the last week, but Saturday always meant staying out longer, more crowded clubs and more meaningless noise to surround himself with, or at least it usually did.

Bruce hadn’t managed to become as drunk as he would have liked. An altercation between Tommy and a man significantly older and taller than either of the boys had seen their group breaking up substantially earlier than was usual, and saw Bruce returning to the manor before midnight with a split lip and a bad temper.

Alfred had of course been disappointed, and Bruce wasn’t drunk enough that he could just laugh off Alfred’s concern. What started as a stern talking-to devolved into a shouting match, until Bruce could feel his hands tightening into fists at his side, his nails digging into the skin of his palms so hard that they might draw blood.

“I’m going to talk to Jeremiah!” he screamed, mostly because he needed an excuse to get away from Alfred before either of them turned the fight into a physical one. “At least he doesn’t see fit to criticize me for my choice of friends!”

“You do that!” Alfred yelled back.

Bruce stormed off inside the manor, and as he did he tried not to think on how he was essentially doing exactly what Alfred wanted him to. He also realized, perhaps a little too late, that he didn’t even know whether Jeremiah was still awake. Jeremiah had proven himself to be even more of a natural night-owl than Bruce was, so hopefully he was still up and working on something somewhere in the manor, otherwise Bruce was going to have to find somewhere else to storm off to.

Luckily he found Jeremiah curled up in the library, several large sheets of paper spread out over the table in front of him, his attention firmly on a complicated-looking diagram in front of him.

Bruce flopped down in one of the empty chairs without greeting the other man. Jeremiah looked up from what he was doing very briefly, before turning his attention back to the papers in front of him.

“I take it your night out with your friends was not as enjoyable as you might have hoped it would be,” Jeremiah said, even though his attention was still firmly on the papers in front of him.

“Yeah, something like that,” Bruce said. 

He wondered whether Jeremiah had noticed the fresh cut on his lip, or whether he had just immediately sensed Bruce’s bad mood.

“Well I sincerely hope that the rest of your evening is better,” Jeremiah said, removing his attention from whatever fascinating plans lay on the papers in front of him to send Bruce a small and annoyingly sincere smile.

Jeremiah’s attention did not immediately return to the work in front of him as Bruce had anticipated it would, and he soon realized that Jeremiah was expecting Bruce to say something in return. Small talk had never been his favorite thing in the world, even if he had been forced to become at least somewhat competent at it in recent years.

“So Alfred mentioned that you work for one of Wayne Enterprises’ subsidiaries?” he asked.

“Oh, yes I do,” Jeremiah said. “But I’m not sure you would find my work particularly interesting. It’s… well, I find it fascinating, but that’s because it’s my life’s work. You probably wouldn’t… Well, you know… It’s all very technical, and you don’t have to force yourself to make small talk on my account…”

Bruce wasn’t sure that his brain was sober enough for dry technical stuff, but the fact that Jeremiah had provided an easy way for Bruce to get away from Alfred for a few minutes made him just that little bit more inclined to be nice to the engineer, and Jeremiah had at least admitted that the topic was boring as all hell, so it wasn’t like he could be offended or surprised when Bruce inevitably spaced out two minutes in.

“Try me,” Bruce said.

* * *

Half an hour later Bruce was still listening in rapt fascination as Jeremiah outlined the finer details of the clean energy project that he had been working on. At first Jeremiah had tried to keep things simple, but as soon as Bruce indicated that he not only completely understood what Jeremiah was talking about, but was also far more interested in it than either of them had anticipated, the engineer moved on to discuss things in more technical and detailed terms.

“If you moved the auxiliary generators closer to the surface you could probably expand the generator’s range by at least ten per cent,” Bruce suggested.

Even though Bruce had been listening to Jeremiah speak about his clean energy project for quite a while, Jeremiah gave him a look of stunned apprehension, as though he couldn’t quite believe that Bruce had actually made an intelligent suggestion. For just a moment Bruce found himself annoyed. Who the hell did Jeremiah think he was? Just because Bruce didn’t go showing off his intelligence at every moment didn’t mean he wasn’t… well… He  _was_  intelligent, wasn’t he? Not that he could offer much recent evidence to support that fact.

Jeremiah stared at Bruce for perhaps a second or two too long, before clearing his throat.

“I’ve considered it,” he said. “But finding a combination of materials for the casing that would be both conductive enough to allow the desired energy output and suppress any more harmful radiation from leaking quickly proved well… difficult.”

“I’ll have a look and see what Wayne Tech’s research division has,” Bruce offered. “Last time I checked they were working on a few smart alloys that might be useful for something like this.”

“Would you?” Jeremiah said, his voice suddenly as low and unsure as it had been when he and Bruce had first run into one another in the kitchen.

Jeremiah cleared his throat again, and suddenly his hands were busy fiddling with his glasses. The other man was brilliant, but he could be so damned timid. Bruce didn’t know why, but it pissed him off. Bruce crossed his arms in front of his chest, and it wasn’t until Jeremiah spoke again that Bruce realized he had been staring.

“You know,” Jeremiah said, smiling shyly as he returned his glasses to his face. “You’re much brighter than the media would have lead me to believe Mister Wayne.”

Bruce wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to take that as a compliment or not. The soft smile that still graced Jeremiah’s face suggested that it had been intended as one. Then again, if news outlets were portraying Bruce as little more than a drunken, out-of-control brat then it was probably because that was essentially the public image Bruce had been projecting over the last few months. Bruce didn’t know why, but the reminder of that behavior annoyed him when it came from Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s kind demeanor suggested that he didn’t judge Bruce for such behavior, and yet Bruce couldn’t help but feel as though he was still being measured it some way, and, when put up against a young man as brilliant and kind as Jeremiah, he had been found greatly wanting.

Damn it all. This was all so confusing. Why did Alfred have to go and offer up their house to this man? Things had been so much simpler before Jeremiah had come along.

“I suppose I haven’t had much opportunity to prove my intelligence to the general public of late,” Bruce conceded, finding it difficult to even fire back a snarky reply when Jeremiah was still smiling softly at him.

“I suppose not,” Jeremiah said, his voice sending a wave of something warm and comfortable all throughout Bruce’s body.

He didn’t want to like Jeremiah. He didn’t want to feel comfortable around him.

But he did. He really did.

* * *

After that he found himself seeking out Jeremiah’s company more often. Despite the occasional pangs of introspection it was just easier to exist around Jeremiah. Any conversations that they had were more cerebral than any other conversations Bruce had been able to have for a very long time, but it wasn’t just the conversations that made their time together so special and so comfortable.

It was the silence.

Jeremiah didn’t mind if Bruce just curled up in a chair and read or messed about on his phone while Jeremiah worked, and neither of them felt the urge to fill the silence with meaningless small talk. It was a comfortable silence; one that was never awkward and which never demanded to be filled.

If Alfred noticed the change in their dynamic then he was at least merciful enough not to mention it to Bruce, although the smug grins that he occasionally sent Bruce after he caught the two of them spending time together said enough on their own.

Sometimes Jeremiah would consult Bruce on certain aspects of his clean energy project. Between firing ideas backwards and forwards and his own investigations into technologies at Wayne Tech that might be able to help the project along, Bruce soon found himself becoming almost as emotionally invested in the project as Jeremiah was.

“You know, once you’ve finished working out these last few kinks I could fund your project,” Bruce mentioned one day while the two of them were curled up in the library together.

“Pardon?” Jeremiah said, glancing up from his laptop for the first time in hours.

Bruce rolled his eyes, but barely looked up from the science magazine that he had been flicking through.

“Did I stutter?” he said. “Your clean energy project. I’ll fund it.”

Jeremiah paused for a moment, his lips moving slightly as he ran through some mental calculations.

“It would cost millions of dollars to even make the first prototype,” Jeremiah pointed out.

“So,” Bruce said. “It would be a worthwhile investment and it’s not like I don’t have the money to spare.”

Bruce looked up from his magazine just long enough to catch Jeremiah’s eyes growing wider and spot a slight flush spreading over his cheeks. Bruce wondered what that flush meant. Was it surprise? Surely the idea that Bruce would want to fund Jeremiah’s project wasn’t  _that_  surprising.

“Thank you,” Jeremiah said, his voice little more than a whisper.

“Seriously,” Bruce said, returning his attention to the magazine in front of him. “It’s fine.”

It wasn’t like he was doing it for Jeremiah. He was doing it because a project as brilliant as Jeremiah’s  _should_  be funded. That was all.

* * *

A couple of days later Bruce found Jeremiah not in his guest room, or the corner of the library that he had slowly claimed as his own over the past week or so. Instead Bruce found him hovering over a small table in the sitting room and inspecting Bruce’s long-neglected chess set. 

Bruce shoved his hands in his pants pockets and cleared his throat, announcing his presence in a way that hopefully wouldn’t startle the other man.

“Oh Bruce,” Jeremiah said, immediately straightening. “My apologies. I didn’t see you there.”

“Do you play?” Bruce asked, indicating the chess set.

“In theory,” Jeremiah said. “I haven’t had much of a chance to play against other people so my skills are mostly theoretical.”

“I’m a bit rusty myself,” Bruce admitted. “I haven’t had anyone to play against except Alfred for a long time, and I already know all of his tricks.”

It had probably been years since Bruce had felt the urge to play, but seeing Jeremiah standing over the chess set, he suddenly found himself gripped by an insatiable curiosity to find out how good Jeremiah was; what strategies the engineer might employ and whether his genius extended beyond his designs.

“How about a match or two?” Bruce suggested.

He flopped into the chair on his side of the table and gestured for Jeremiah to take the other. Jeremiah didn’t say anything in reply, just sat down and waited for Bruce to make the first move.

* * *

Three matches later, Bruce found himself stunned and completely in awe of Jeremiah’s skill. Jeremiah had managed to beat him in two out of three of the matches they’d played so far. One of Bruce’s losses was because he had made a couple of really quite basic mistakes (mostly, he told himself, because he was out of practice), but the other win was simply because Jeremiah was absolutely brilliant and he had employed a strategy that Bruce simply hadn’t been able to predict or counteract.

They barely spoke as they played; all of their attention being taken up by the match itself, so when Alfred’s voice suddenly rang out part way through their fourth match, loud and clear and not that far behind him, Bruce actually found himself jumping.

“Master Wayne,” Alfred announced. “Thomas Elliot is at the front door with a couple of his tarts and wishes to know whether you will be joining him this evening,”

If Bruce hadn’t already known that Alfred detested Tommy and the influence that he had on Bruce then the fact that Alfred had not managed to summon the propriety that he managed to adopt even where criminals like Selina were concerned would have been a dead giveaway. 

Bruce tore his attention away from the chessboard and the man sitting opposite him for the first time since he had sat down. He had been about to comment that Tommy had arrived a lot earlier than Bruce had expected, but when he looked to the windows he discovered that many hours had passed while he and Jeremiah had been playing, and that the sky outside was now well and truly dark.

Bruce cursed beneath his breath as he got to his feet.

“Of course Alfred,” he said, adjusting his turtle-neck sweater and trying to work out whether it would be considered too casual or plain for a night out on the town; not that he suspected Tommy or the others would care as long as he was still bankrolling their excursion.

“Tell Tommy I’ll be there in a moment,” he said. If he threw on a nice enough jacket over the top of his sweater then it probably wouldn’t matter, although he’d definitely need to freshen up before he headed out.

He spared a moment however for Jeremiah, who stayed sitting there quietly on the other side of the chessboard, watching Bruce closely but without comment. He was not, perhaps, the most expressive person that Bruce had ever met, but Bruce had started to grow used to Jeremiah’s subtleties, and suspected Jeremiah was just as disappointed as he was that their match was being interrupted.

“I suppose we’ll have to finish this match another time,” Bruce commented.

“I suppose so,” Jeremiah said, summoning one of his beautifully soft smiles for Bruce.

Bruce nodded at Jeremiah, and sent him a smile that was even less convincing that Jeremiah’s own had been, before heading off to ready himself.

* * *

When he made his way back downstairs he found not only Alfred and Tommy and his entourage waiting for him, but Jeremiah as well.

“You look nice,” Jeremiah commented.

To be honest Bruce hadn’t put all that much effort in to his appearance. He’d just thrown on a dark blue jacket, watch and dress shoes; enough to show off his wealth without going overboard or looking pretentious. He didn’t feel like he looked nice, but something about the way Jeremiah said it almost made him believe it, or at least believe that Jeremiah really thought he looked nice.

It was a good feeling, and one that Bruce wasn’t entirely sure he deserved.

“Thanks,” he muttered, trying not to linger on the compliment for too long. After all, Tommy was waiting for him.

Each step towards the front of the manor suddenly felt more difficult than it should have. It was a sudden, inexplicable feeling that made Bruce want to stay with Jeremiah, and it had almost nothing to do with the half-finished chess match that they had left behind in the sitting room. 

Bruce hesitated by the doorway, before running back towards Jeremiah. He found himself grabbing the other man’s hand in his own, and gently running a thumb over the back of the other man’s hand, momentarily amazed by how soft the other man’s skin was.

“Why don’t you come with us?” Bruce asked.

For just a moment he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to see Jeremiah truly unwind; to see his face light up with more than just the soft smiles that Bruce had seen so far. He found himself wondering what Jeremiah would be like drunk, and before he really knew what was happening, he found himself imagining the two of them hanging all over each other; their inhibitions having been left far behind, his lips pressing against Jeremiah’s own…

Bruce realized that his thoughts had run away from him just in time to fully register the fact that Jeremiah had pulled his hand away from Bruce. 

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Jeremiah said.

Bruce gave Jeremiah his most charming smile, trying to convince both Jeremiah and himself that the rejection hadn’t stung, and that he wasn’t pursuing a lost cause, but the way that Jeremiah sighed and brought his hand up to gently massage the bridge of his nose gave Bruce the distinct impression that he wasn’t going to be able to charm Jeremiah into doing what he wanted; not this time.

“Come on,” Bruce said. “It’ll be fun.”

He reached up to playfully slap a hand down on Jeremiah’s shoulder. It was a normal enough way of expressing affection (even if that affection was mostly feigned) with Tommy and the others, but Jeremiah flinched as though the touch had hurt.

“Will it?” Jeremiah asked.

Bruce wanted to promise Jeremiah that it would, but he knew that he couldn’t. He could barely imagine Jeremiah getting drunk, let alone imagine him enjoying it. All of that noise? All of that chaos? That wasn’t Jeremiah at all. Jeremiah was quiet and gentle; warm coffees and chess matches and brilliant science; not loud clubs and smoke and the smell of spilled wine and someone else’s cologne.

“Why do you keep doing this to yourself Bruce?” Jeremiah asked.

Bruce frowned.

“Because it makes me happy? Because Tommy and the others are my friends?”

Bruce hadn’t meant for his words to come out sounding like questions, but they did, and he couldn’t exactly take them back now.

“Does it though?” Jeremiah asked. “You don’t… you don’t seem happy to me Bruce. Quite the opposite in fact.”

Jeremiah’s words rang painfully true, and Bruce didn’t like it one bit. He’d spent far too long denying the truth to himself and to Alfred to allow someone like Jeremiah to just come along and confront Bruce with it.

“What the hell do you know!?” Bruce snapped. “You think that just because you’ve lived in my house for a couple of weeks you can make that sort of assumption? You don’t know anything about me!”

It was a lie and Bruce knew it.

Jeremiah’s eyes widened, and then he was dropping his head and taking a step back. Bruce hadn’t realized how closely they had been standing and how much their personal space had overlapped until Jeremiah moved away.

“I’m sorry,” Jeremiah said. “You’re right of course.”

Bruce wished that he would fight back; that he would argue and force Bruce to listen to him like Alfred did. It would be so much easier to hate him that way. As it was Bruce felt absolutely terrible for even yelling at Jeremiah.

“You should go spend time with your friends,” Jeremiah said, clasping his hands in front of him and refusing to meet Bruce’s eyes.

Bruce continued to stare at Jeremiah. He wanted him to do anything; anything at all to push back; anything at all to try and convince Bruce that he should abandon Tommy and the others and just stay at home with Jeremiah; where things were quiet and calm and Bruce didn’t feel the overwhelming urge to drown himself in sensation. If he did that; if he did anything at all to convince Bruce to stay…

“Take care,” Jeremiah added, and Bruce realized that his voice was breaking, although Jeremiah was doing his best to try and hide it. “I expect you won’t get back until late, so I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Come on Bruce!” Tommy called out from where he was standing in the open door, one arm wrapped around the waist of his most recent girlfriend. “Hurry up and finish saying goodbye to your little boyfriend or I swear we’ll leave without you!”

Jeremiah looked up, meeting Bruce’s eyes again, if only for a moment, and Bruce found himself, however briefly, becoming absolutely enraptured with the other man’s eyes. He still felt like they were reaching all the way down inside of him, right into Bruce’s soul, where something dark and miserable had curled up inside of him not so long ago and made itself at home.

He turned his back on Jeremiah. Bruce didn’t look back at him as he approached Tommy and the others, and made sure that he smiled for his ‘friends’.

Unlike Jeremiah, Tommy didn’t see anything wrong with Bruce’s smile at all, or if he did then at least he had the grace not to mention it.

* * *

Bruce clenched his own interlocked hands together so tightly that they hurt. He stared out at the dance floor without actually seeing any of the people on it. The heavy beat of the music drowned out almost every word spoken by those around him.

He heard a brief bark of laughter as one of the girls reacted to something that Tommy had said. It sounded faker than Bruce’s smiles had been for most of the night, but he couldn’t bring himself to care; not about Tommy, not about people grinding up against one another only a few feet in front of him, and not the expensive champagne that they had been drinking since approximately two minutes after they had walked into the club.

Bruce hadn’t drunk as much as he usually would have. He wasn’t sure why, but it all tasted worse that evening, and for once he couldn’t ignore the burning that the alcohol caused in the back of his throat. Usually he just downed whatever he was drinking quickly enough that the taste or the burning didn’t bother him, but for some reason tonight was just different.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that every time he closed his eyes he saw Jeremiah staring at him; quiet and strange and wonderful and so, very, very different from everything that currently surrounded Bruce. Jeremiah probably wouldn’t have approved of Bruce’s behavior at all. He’d probably be disappointed, and for some reason that stung even worse than Alfred’s disappointment did.

Bruce continued to stare at the dance floor and for once he didn’t even try to fake a smile.

* * *

“You were right,” Bruce said as he stumbled into the kitchen of Wayne Manor.

It was early enough in the evening that Jeremiah was still awake. Bruce found him sitting in the kitchen, nursing a cup of hot cocoa and scribbling rough designs and calculations down on a notepad.

“What?” Jeremiah said, glancing up from his work and taking a moment to adjust his glasses.

“You were right about all of it,” Bruce said as he took the seat next to Jeremiah and buried his head in his hands. “It’s not fun and it doesn’t make me happy. In fact I hate it. I hate Tommy and his stupid cologne and the petty, shallow people that he surrounds himself with and I’m not even sure that I like champagne.”

There was a moment of silence, and, unusual considering that it was Jeremiah that Bruce was with, the silence was actually tense. Bruce waited for Jeremiah to say that he had been right; to chastise Bruce in some manner, but it never happened.

“I was wondering why you were back so early,” Jeremiah said instead when he eventually spoke.

Bruce glanced at the clock on the wall.

“It’s almost midnight,” he pointed out. “It’s not that early.”

“Maybe not,” Jeremiah agreed. “But it is a wonderful surprise considering I wasn’t expecting to see you again until around midday tomorrow.”

Bruce rested the side of his face on one of his hands and observed Jeremiah closely. One corner of his mouth had started to twitch upwards into something approaching a smile. It was much more reserved than the wide, carefree grin that Bruce had found himself fantasizing about earlier in the night, but Bruce still thought that it was beautiful, and of course it was infinitely preferable to the chastising that he had feared he was going to receive.

Now relaxed, Bruce found himself staring at Jeremiah as the other man brought his hot cocoa up to his lips once more and took a sip. His eyes closed in contentment as he took a sip, and Bruce swore he could see the corners of Jeremiah’s mouth moving further up into a smile around the curve of the cup.

He really  _was_  beautiful.

Jeremiah placed the cup back down on the kitchen table and turned to smile softly at Bruce, not seeming to mind at all that Bruce was now openly staring at him.

“Alfred made scones,” Jeremiah offered, nodding at a cooling rack on the other side of the kitchen. “They should still be warm.”

“Thanks,” Bruce said, jumping to his feet and forcing himself to look away from Jeremiah’s face.

Bruce made himself a hot cocoa to match Jeremiah’s, and grabbed a couple of freshly baked scones, before returning to the bench alongside Jeremiah. The kitchen was mostly quiet, and cozy, and Bruce felt so much less lonely than he had at the club.

* * *

When Bruce woke up the next morning he realized that he could not deny the truth any longer; he was in love with Jeremiah Valeska.

In the end the two of them had stayed up as long as Bruce probably would have if he had chosen to stay out with Tommy, but he and Jeremiah had consumed hot cocoa and fresh scones with jam and cream rather than alcohol, and Bruce had found himself smiling and even laughing more than he suspected he would have if he had stayed out.

Bruce had expected Jeremiah to pry into Bruce’s feelings some more, or for him to at least ask why Bruce had decided to abandon Tommy and the others, but he left that topic of conversation completely alone. Perhaps the strangest thing about it was the feeling Bruce had; that if Jeremiah  _had_  asked then Bruce would have answered any and all of his questions.  

Bruce wasn’t sure that he had ever felt so comfortable around another person. Perhaps he had around his mother and father before they had been killed, but if he had then it wasn’t something that he could remember clearly.

Jeremiah was quiet and calm and soothing, and remarkably intelligent, and beautiful, and everything that Bruce had never realized he had craved in a companion.

He didn’t want to tell Jeremiah how he felt though; not wanting to sabotage the perfect moments of silence that existed between them by making them awkward. He found himself staring at the other man though; watching the way that his fingers traced the large sheets of paper in front of him, or the way the corners of his eyes twitched sometimes when he was concentrating.

Jeremiah caught him staring a couple of times.

“What is it?” he asked the first time.

“Hrm?” Bruce replied, trying to play innocent.

“You were staring.”

“Oh, was I?” Bruce said. He could feel his cheeks reddening, and had a feeling that his lying wasn’t going to be good enough to convince anyone, much less Jeremiah, who seemed to understand him in a way that no-one else did. “I’m sorry Jeremiah. I didn’t realize. I was um… I was just thinking.”

“Oh,” Jeremiah said, sounding almost disappointed. “Just thinking?”

“Yeah. Just thinking.”

“All right.”

Of course Bruce didn’t mention that it was Jeremiah himself that he had been thinking about.

* * *

The next time Tommy came calling, hoping to drag Bruce out for a night on the town, Bruce respectfully declined, trying to ignore the gleeful grin that appeared on Alfred’s face when he did.

Tommy kicked up a fuss, mostly, Bruce suspected, because he and his friends would no longer have Bruce there to pay for everything. He certainly didn’t seem as though he was going to miss Bruce’s company, not if some of the colorful language that he chose to use to describe Bruce was any indication.

“Well, I suppose that’s that,” Alfred said as Tommy stormed back to the car.

“I suppose so,” Bruce said.

“I do believe Master Valeska can currently be found in the rear drawing room if you wish to spend time with him instead,” Alfred added.

Bruce  _had_  been planning to find Jeremiah, but he wasn’t sure that he was comfortable with how easily Alfred had been able to guess that. If he had been the same Bruce Wayne of a couple of weeks earlier he probably would have found something to say; some comment about how he didn’t appreciate Alfred leaping to such conclusions, but as it was he simply nodded politely at Alfred and headed inside the manor.

“Oh, and before you head off, I was planning on serving salmon for dinner sir,” Alfred said. “If that would be acceptable to you.”

Jeremiah absolutely loved Alfred’s baked salmon.

“That will be quite acceptable, Alfred,” Bruce said, as he fiddled with the end of one of his sleeves. “Thank you.”

He pretended not to notice how brightly Alfred beamed at that one. It was stupid really. It wasn’t as though it had been  _that_  long since Bruce had thanked him for something, had it?

* * *

The days passed quickly; almost too quickly for Bruce’s liking, and it wasn’t long before they received word that the reconstructions to Jeremiah’s underground bunker were complete, meaning that it would be safe for Jeremiah to move back in whenever he wished.

The announcement made Bruce’s heart feel like it was twisting itself into knots. It meant that there was no reason for Jeremiah to stay at the manor anymore.

Bruce wondered if Jeremiah would agree to stay at Wayne Manor permanently if he asked him, although that was undoubtedly asking for too much. The two of them had admittedly grown close over the past few weeks but why would Jeremiah want to live with Bruce when he had his own fortress? He was undoubtedly at least a little homesick as well, and there was no guarantee that Jeremiah was going to miss Bruce as much as Bruce knew that he was going to miss Jeremiah and the comfortable silences that they had shared.

“So I’ll be moving back there tomorrow,” Jeremiah said, clasping his hands in front of him as he spoke to Bruce and Alfred, far more formal than Bruce felt he had any reason to be. “I won’t trouble you with my presence any longer.”

Bruce knew that he should say something; that he should tell Jeremiah that he hadn’t been any trouble at all; but it felt as though a rock had suddenly lodged itself in his throat. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything at all, so instead he just nodded in reply to what Jeremiah was saying.

Bruce sought out Jeremiah’s company throughout the day, wanting to spend as much time as possible with him before he disappeared from Bruce’s life. He helped Jeremiah to pack, and when that was done they tried to play chess and talk about the future of Jeremiah’s renewable energy project, but it wasn’t the same.

The silence between them just felt awkward now.

* * *

The hours passed far more quickly than Bruce wanted them to, slipping between his fingers no matter how hard he tried to grasp at them, and soon enough the time had come for Jeremiah to leave.

Bruce had offered Jeremiah a ride home, but Jeremiah had politely declined Bruce’s help. When Bruce had tried to at least pay for the private, dark-tinted car that Jeremiah had arranged to take him home, Jeremiah had declined Bruce’s money as well.

Eventually the hour arrived when there was nothing left to do but say goodbye. Jeremiah’s bags had mostly been piled up in the back of the car, along with his laptop and plans and, it seemed, every good memory that Bruce had made with the other man over the past few weeks.

Bruce had always been good at suppressing his emotions. His parents’ death had reinforced that particular character trait, and somehow he had grown even better at it since spending so much time with Tommy; Tommy, who he had always hated but had forced himself to spend time with because without Tommy and his friends and the clubs and the noise and the alcohol there was nothing; just silence and sorrow and loneliness, and the thought of going back to that; to either the loneliness or to Tommy were both equally unbearable.

“Bruce?”

He realized that Jeremiah was speaking again, and his voice was so soft and so perfect and Bruce realized then that he wanted to hear it all the time; every day if possible.

“I want you to know that I enjoyed the time that we spent together,” Jeremiah continued.

“So did I,” Bruce replied, his voice breaking even on just those three simple words. They weren’t the three simple words that Bruce really wanted to say though.

Jeremiah smiled softly and nodded, and then he was leaving, taking the last of his bags to the waiting car.

Bruce knew that he had to say something; if he didn’t say  _something_ , then Jeremiah was going to leave and it felt like he might be gone forever, and Bruce wasn’t sure he knew how to cope with that. 

“Wait!” Bruce called out.

Jeremiah paused at the manor’s entrance, one hand lingering on the door frame, and looked back at Bruce. He swallowed, and Bruce wondered whether maybe, just maybe, it was because Jeremiah’s nerves were wound just as tightly and his heart was in just as much turmoil as Bruce’s own. All he knew for sure was that he couldn’t take his eyes off Jeremiah in that moment, and he couldn’t just let him leave without saying or doing  _something_.

Before he knew what he was doing he was running towards Jeremiah.

His hands came up to gently rest on either side of Jeremiah’s face as he approached him. Bruce caught just a second of the surprise that appeared on Jeremiah’s face before his own eyes were closing, and then he was pressing his lips against Jeremiah’s.

The kiss was soft and gentle. It was the only way that Bruce could ever imagine kissing Jeremiah.

After a moment Bruce felt Jeremiah kissing back, just as softly and shyly as Bruce had.

When Bruce reluctantly pulled back from Jeremiah he discovered that the other man’s eyes were still closed. Bruce very slowly and very hesitantly removed his hands from either side of Jeremiah’s face, and it was only then that Jeremiah’s eyes opened.

Jeremiah’s eyes found Bruce’s own and then his whole face seemed to turn bright red. The corners of his mouth slowly twitched up into a grin that spread wider and wider. This wasn’t one of the soft smiles that he usually gave Bruce, but instead resembled the wide, careless grin that Bruce had fantasized about on more than one occasion.

The smile was everything that Bruce had hoped it would be, and even more beautiful than he could have imagined. He felt his heart turn in his chest at the sight and knew that there was no going back now; he really was in love with Jeremiah.

“Uh… I…” Jeremiah fumbled over his words for a moment, before taking a moment to adjust his glasses. “I can’t say I was expecting that.”

“I couldn’t…” Bruce paused to swallow, suddenly finding himself more nervous than he had been even right before kissing Jeremiah. “I couldn’t let you leave without telling you.”

“Without telling me what?”

‘That I love you.’

It was the first thing that came to Bruce’s mind, but Bruce had a feeling that it was a little too early for either of them to go saying things like that.

“That I’ll miss you,” Bruce settled for saying instead. “And that I’ve come to care for you a lot over the past few weeks.”

Jeremiah paused for a moment, and then he was surging forward, pressing another light kiss to Bruce’s lips before Bruce could prepare himself or make sense of what was going on. Bruce barely had a chance to kiss Jeremiah back before Jeremiah pulled away.

“I’ve come… uh…” Jeremiah muttered, clearly too embarrassed to meet Bruce’s eyes. “I’ve come to care for you a lot too.”

Bruce wondered when it would stop being too early to tell Jeremiah that he loved him.

“It will be my birthday in a few weeks,” Bruce said. “I’ll be turning eighteen. I don’t really have anything formal planned, but whatever we end up doing; I’d love for you to be a part of it.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Jeremiah replied. “Although I’m sure that we can find some reason to see one another again before then. After all, a few weeks will probably feel like a very long time apart after sharing a roof for so long.”

Jeremiah seemed more than a little flustered. Bruce wasn’t sure his own smile could grow any wider.

“I’m sure we can,” he agreed.

Bruce could hardly wait.


End file.
